Anti-social: It’s fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

反社交：如今主导社交媒体信息流的是潮流，而非朋友

Social media platforms used to be about communication between friends – now many are increasingly short video entertainment hubs. The business model is to increase the time people spend on their apps and increase ad revenue. But is there already a consumer backlash? 社交媒体平台曾经是朋友间沟通的工具，如今许多平台正日益演变为短视频娱乐中心。其商业模式旨在增加用户在应用上的停留时间并提升广告收入。但消费者是否已经开始抵制了呢？

Aurélia fixes herself a coffee, sits down in her beautiful garden not far from Paris and goes on Instagram “to relax.” First up: “a guy I like a lot who does interior design. He’s in Venice at the moment.” She’s into interior design, and has even just had two bird drawings by the 19th Century English designer William Morris tattooed on her arms. She scrolls down. Two kittens having a fight. “I love animals so I get a lot of animals. That’s how it works, social media. You click on bananas and they give you bananas.” 奥雷莉（Aurélia）冲了一杯咖啡，坐在巴黎郊外美丽的庭院里，打开 Instagram “放松一下”。首先映入眼帘的是：“我非常喜欢的一位室内设计师，他现在正在威尼斯。”她对室内设计很感兴趣，甚至刚在手臂上纹了两幅 19 世纪英国设计师威廉·莫里斯（William Morris）的鸟类画作。她继续向下滚动屏幕，看到两只小猫在打架。“我喜欢动物，所以系统给我推送了很多动物内容。社交媒体就是这样运作的：你点击香蕉，它就给你推送香蕉。”

There are ads too – although they look just like the other posts – for a robot-vacuum cleaner, a diet and bed linen (with Morris-inspired designs). But no friends. She has 198 on Instagram but she says “it’s completely changed. I practically don’t see any friends’ posts anymore.” She’s pretty much given up posting herself. “I don’t think anyone sees them anymore anyway.” While there remain committed social, amateur posters on Instagram and especially Facebook, the switch from communicating with people you know to scrolling through professionally made content from people you don’t, is even more pronounced among young users. 广告也随之而来——尽管它们看起来和其他帖子没什么两样——推销着扫地机器人、减肥产品和床品（带有莫里斯风格的设计）。但就是没有朋友的动态。她在 Instagram 上有 198 位好友，但她说：“一切都变了。我几乎再也看不到朋友发的帖子了。”她自己也基本放弃了发帖。“反正我觉得也没人看了。”虽然 Instagram 和 Facebook 上仍有一些热衷于社交的业余发帖者，但从与熟人交流转向浏览陌生人制作的专业内容，这种转变在年轻用户中尤为明显。

Kylian, 16, is in vocational training to become a chef. He’s on TikTok and Youtube a lot, he says. “I like looking at videos more than photos or messages. I watch videos made by people I don’t know. I don’t post at all. I’m a rather shy person. I stay in my bubble. I watch and that’s all. I keep my reactions to myself.” 16 岁的基利安（Kylian）正在接受厨师职业培训。他说自己经常刷 TikTok 和 YouTube。“比起照片或信息，我更喜欢看视频。我观看的是陌生人制作的视频。我从不发帖。我性格比较内向，只待在自己的小圈子里。我只看不发，把反应留给自己。”

“I spend a lot of time scrolling through videos made by content-creators,” says Lucie, also 16. “They’re more interesting than the posts of people I know.” She doesn’t post except sometimes “stories” which disappear after 24 hours. Whether it’s TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, we are a long way from the “digital town square” of personal interaction that social media was even just a few years ago. “我花很多时间刷内容创作者制作的视频，”同样 16 岁的露西（Lucie）说，“它们比我认识的人发的帖子有趣多了。”她除了偶尔发布 24 小时后就会消失的“快拍”（stories）外，几乎不发帖。无论是 TikTok、Snapchat、Facebook 还是 Instagram，我们距离几年前社交媒体所代表的那个“数字城镇广场”式的个人互动时代，已经非常遥远了。

In France, annual official Barometre du numerique 2026 shows 49% of social media users are “active only occasionally”. In the UK, an Ofcom report published in April showed a year-on-year drop of users who actively post from 61% to 49%. In the US, a Morning Consult survey of June last year found 28% reported posting less often than the previous year. Just 33% now post daily compared to 57% who use it for entertainment daily. The gap is a lot wider still for Gen Z – 18% active for 74% passive. 在法国，2026 年官方年度《数字晴雨表》（Barometre du numerique）显示，49% 的社交媒体用户“仅偶尔活跃”。在英国，Ofcom 四月份发布的一份报告显示，活跃发帖的用户比例同比从 61% 下降至 49%。在美国，去年六月的一项 Morning Consult 调查发现，28% 的受访者表示发帖频率低于往年。如今只有 33% 的人每天发帖，而每天将其用于娱乐的人数比例高达 57%。对于 Z 世代来说，这一差距更为悬殊——仅 18% 的人活跃，而 74% 的人处于被动浏览状态。

Vanessa Lalo, a Paris-based clinical psychologist specialising in on-line behaviour, says “users have become more conscious that the traces you leave (on social media) stay there forever and some no longer want to maintain social media relations that can be superficial. Some don’t want the exposure to criticism that might be a risk when you post or the feeling that their post will seem poor alongside all the professional content”. 常驻巴黎、专注于在线行为研究的临床心理学家凡妮莎·拉洛（Vanessa Lalo）表示：“用户已经意识到，你在社交媒体上留下的痕迹会永远存在，有些人不再愿意维持那种可能很肤浅的社交关系。有些人不想因为发帖而面临被批评的风险，也不想产生那种‘自己的帖子在专业内容面前显得很寒酸’的感觉。”

However, Lalo adds, people haven’t stopped posting, rather they are posting different things and in different places. “On TikTok, for example, young people publish a lot of content but it’s more funny parodies and remixes of existing material. The goal is to make people laugh, not to tell people about their lives.” 然而，拉洛补充道，人们并没有停止发帖，只是发布的内容和平台发生了变化。“例如在 TikTok 上，年轻人发布大量内容，但更多是搞笑的模仿和对现有素材的二次创作。目的是为了博人一笑，而不是分享自己的生活。”

That still happens, she says, but it’s moved from social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to messaging sites like WhatsApp. There’s also been a move towards private groups on Instagram and Snapchat. “These are much more intimate places where you’re not bombarded with ads and content made by influencers,” she says. 她说，分享生活的情况依然存在，但已经从 Instagram 和 Facebook 等社交媒体平台转移到了 WhatsApp 等即时通讯软件上。此外，人们也开始转向 Instagram 和 Snapchat 上的私密群组。“这些地方更加私密，你不会被广告和网红制作的内容狂轰滥炸，”她说。

“What we’re seeing is social media splitting in two,” says social media consultant Matt Navarra, author of the Geekout Newsletter. “Big platforms like Instagram and TikTok are becoming more about entertainment and discovery. WhatsApp is becoming the place people go to actually be social. The catch is, those kinds of spaces are harder for companies to make money from.” “我们看到社交媒体正在一分为二，”《Geekout》通讯作者、社交媒体顾问马特·纳瓦拉（Matt Navarra）表示，“像 Instagram 和 TikTok 这样的大平台正变得越来越侧重于娱乐和发现。而 WhatsApp 正成为人们真正进行社交的地方。问题在于，这些空间很难让公司赚到钱。”

It was TikTok that helped to pioneer an algorithm that figures out from the moment you start scrolling what you like, and then fills your feed with material calculated to keep you on the app for the longest possible time. 正是 TikTok 开创了一种算法，从你开始滑动屏幕的那一刻起，它就能判断出你的喜好，然后用精心计算过的内容填满你的信息流，以确保你尽可能长时间地停留在应用上。

Now, says Matt Navarra, “Meta has built what it calls an AI system for unconnected content recommendations on Facebook and Instagram, which basically means, they’re increasingly showing you stuff from people you don’t follow because the machine thinks you’re going to like it. It’s not biased towards, is it a professional creator? Is it a brand? Is it a friend? If they can see that you’ve engaged with a friend a lot, you might see a lot more of their content. It’s just that who you are friends with, who you follow, has become irrelevant in a way.” 马特·纳瓦拉说，现在，“Meta 在 Facebook 和 Instagram 上建立了一套所谓的‘非关联内容推荐 AI 系统’，这意味着它们越来越多地向你展示你未关注的人发布的内容，因为机器认为你会喜欢。它并不偏向于‘这是专业创作者吗？这是品牌吗？这是朋友吗？’。如果系统发现你与某位朋友互动频繁，你可能会看到更多他们的内容。只是，你和谁是朋友、你关注了谁，在某种程度上已经变得无关紧要了。”

This all means that small businesses, that have long used social media for free promotion have to up their game. “There’s a real opportunity for some small businesses,” says Matt Navarra. “A bakery, florist, salon or local café can still break through if they have a good story, strong visuals or behind-the-scenes content people want to watch. But it also means the job has changed. Small business owners are being pushed to become presenters, editors, trend spotters and content creators, on top of actually running the business.” 这一切意味着，长期利用社交媒体进行免费推广的小企业必须提升自己的水平。“对于一些小企业来说，这确实是一个机会，”马特·纳瓦拉说，“面包店、花店、沙龙或当地咖啡馆如果拥有好的故事、强有力的视觉效果或人们想看的幕后内容，依然可以脱颖而出。但这同时也意味着工作性质变了。小企业主在经营业务之余，还被迫成为了主持人、剪辑师、潮流观察员和内容创作者。”